how much did they have planned out? (no spoilers for US viewers)

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

I'm rewatching the entire show atm, to get myself up to date properly for the finale. The last season or two I've been losing faith in the show, but last weeks ep (dr linus) brought back the love it used to inspire in me and I dove right in before cynicism could take root again

ive noticed a few little things in the first season, and so far in the second (but i've forgotten them all now).. but one thing I noticed in episode 2x07.. the episode from the perspective of the tail section. When anna lucia is talking to goodwin, just before she tells him she knows he's an other she mentions that the army knife they took from an other others (others is such a stupid name) body was US military, at least 20 years old. Were they really planning out back at the start of season 2 what they were going to do with the time traveling and the bomb or is that just a damned fine coincidence?

Jay Ru

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

Were they really planning out back at the start of season 2 what they were going to do with the time traveling and the bomb or is that just a damned fine coincidence?

they of easily explained the knife without any time travel, all they'd have to was show the military on the island during somebodys flashback like Ben or even Richard (if we ever get to see one)

with that said i think the time travel was always on the cards!

cooker3

Well, they've been fairly honest about the pilot. When that was filmed, they knew nothing. They never thought it would get beyond the pilot. When the show was commissioned they didn't think they would get beyond 13 episodes. So early on I don't think much was planned and if you look at the early episodes they are totally character driven; there is very little actual plot happening.

I think when Carlton came on board they started to seriously think long term about where they were going as it was becoming clear that the show was huge. I think most of the long term plot was put together during the season 1 break. So Dharma, the others, electro-magnetic properties of the island etc

So an example I heard from an interview with Damon. In the pilot they included the backgammon scene with Locke and Walt. It was obviously very symbolic and they knew that if the show was a long term hit this may have to pay the scene off, but as I said above they never realistically thought that would happen. The character of Mib/Esau was really first properly discussed during the Season 1-2 break. Now, did they knew they would pull it out in season 5? Of course not. Did they know Locke would have to die and Mib would take his form? I have no idea. I'd say they had ideas how to pull it off but nothing definite.

Another example is Michael Emerson. People love saying how he was only hired for 3 episodes which proves they were making it up as they go along. That is not really the case. They knew season 3 was going be about the others. They knew there would be a leader. They wanted Emerson as the leader, but you never know if something will work out. Maybe the actor just doesn't work, maybe he doesn't gel with the cast, maybe he doesn't enjoy living on Hawaii (like AAA) If Emerson hadn't worked out; he would have gotten killed off and someone else would have become leader of the others.

There are plans but there is a lot of flexibility. There just has to be.

Penn

Excellent points cooker3.

There has to be flexibility. While the main points were probably planned (the time-travel, flashforwards, Jacob etc), the rest, they can just put something in and figure out a way to explain it later. Not planned as such, just explained later. I doubt when we first saw the 4-toed statue that the writers knew Jacob was going to live there. And then there's Paulo and Nikki. Introduced in Season 3 as main characters, so the writers obviously had some plan for them. But the fans didn't like them, so they were killed off. Simply just a case of, whatever plans they had for those characters, give to someone else.

silsean

I was under the idea that Damon and JJ Abrams sat down over the course of two days or so, before the pilot, and fleshed out the guts of the show. Maybe not the roads they'd take to get there but the backstory and important themes. Anyone know where i might have come up with this idea?

Sad Professor

silsean wrote: »

I was under the idea that Damon and JJ Abrams sat down over the course of two days or so, before the pilot, and fleshed out the guts of the show. Maybe not the roads they'd take to get there but the backstory and important themes. Anyone know where i might have come up with this idea?

They've mentioned it a few times. Here's one instance from the season 1 dvd documentary:

Damon Lindelof: After the meeting, I went home, I was totally jazzed. I started writing some ideas down, I started sending J.J. emails, then the next day he was like, "Why don't you come by, again, and we'll start figuring out if we can make this into a pilot."

Bryan Burk: So we started talking about what the show was, and who these people were, and where they had landed, and what that thing was on the island. And the big picture of where we're going and at the end of an initial conversation, of like twenty or thirty minutes, we had discussed where the show goes for, I believe for the first five or six years. Like, we understood the big picture. And it was then that we realized, we know what this show is.

Source

Earthhorse

Personally, I think they had very little of it planned out. They maybe knew the kinds of things they were going to do but I doubt they knew the specifics. If they did have it planned out I think there would be far more resonance between things that are happening now and things that happened in earlier seasons.